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Dale Carnegie Training partners with companies and organizations of all sizes to produce measurable business results

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Coburg Dairy

Coburg Dairy is based in Charleston, SC and has 300 employees and annual revenues of approximately $86 million from its distribution of milk and juice products throughout South Carolina and northeast Georgia. Coburg has been in business since the 1920s and, in 2001, was acquired by National Diary Holdings, one of the major players in the dairy industry.

Business Challenge

Gary Rackley, General Manager of Coburg Dairy, confirmed that, "This business is extremely competitive, with very slim margins, and we've really got to watch our pennies, literally, on a day-to-day basis. We have one primary competitor in our marketplace, and we go at it tooth-and-nail on the street."

With such a competitive marketplace and not much room to maneuver, Coburg recognized the need to get the management team working together to cut costs and increase efficiency.

Solution

Dale Carnegie Training worked with Coburg to determine objectives and developed a customized leadership program that helped managers increase communication and collaboration to reduce the cost of doing business. "The end result was that everybody agreed that this was exactly what we wanted. Everybody had the feeling that this was not just DCT, this was a DCT/Coburg management training course," says Rackley.

Results

According to Rackley, the customized training program developed by DCT for Coburg Dairy is producing very tangible results that are more than justifying its investment.

"Right now," he says, "we are looking at having the best year in terms of cost savings that we have had in probably ten years. While we had some projects and initiatives in place prior to beginning the DCT, I feel very strongly, and I'm sure my management team does too, that the management training that we went through really helped sharpen our focus on those projects that could be of greatest benefit to us financially. We wound up with five or six specific objectives that will help make us financially healthy."

Increased communication among management was able to increase the bottom line and ultimately lead to a change in the way Coburg produced it products. These two factors have contributed to Coburg Dairy having one of the best years in recent history in terms of net profitability according to Rackley.

"I strongly recommended our corporate office look seriously at using Dale Carnegie’s management training program. I told them that it is just a tremendous team-building atmosphere, and that everybody gets a better grasp and commitment to what their company should be seeking to achieve."